Page 93 of Thunder with a Chance of Lovestruck

“You slept with my niece! What else is there to explain?” Drest yelled so loud the overhead light fixture rattled.

“Hey, I supported you when I found out you’d claimed Rachael,” said Stratton, his hands in the air again.

His words meant nothing to Drest when the all-consuming urge to smash his cousin’s face still had him in its grip. He went for Stratton only to think harder on what the man had just said. He came to a stop, positive he’d heard Stratton wrong. “You claimed Astria? She’s your mate?”

“Yes,” said Astria. “Please stop fighting.”

His anger was like a balloon with a slow leak. It eased out of him as he stared at his niece. She was all grown up now. A woman. One he’d actually seen and spoken to eighteen years ago. How had he missed it then? It was her. She was alive and well. Emotions welled in him. “I gave up hope of ever seeing you again. Rachael? Is she in town too?”

Stratton sighed and walked toward the bed. He grabbed something and then faced Drest, coming closer to him. “Drest, here. This is your daughter. Her name is Demi.”

Drest eased the photo from Stratton’s hand, shock coursing through his veins.

Stratton pushed him back toward the door. “Can you go downstairs and let us get dressed?”

Tears broke free as Drest met his cousin’s gaze. “I have a daughter.”

“You do.” Stratton hugged him and then pushed him toward the door more. “We can talk in a minute, okay?”

ChapterThirty-Two

Rachael

Robin scrolledthrough the satellite radio stations at a rate a human couldn’t possibly catch a word being said or sung. He’d been doing as much for the last eighty miles of our road trip.

He leaned over toward me from the passenger seat and waggled his brows. “Am I annoying you yet?”

I snorted. “Always.”

He grinned and landed on a classic rock station that was playing an Aerosmith song. Drest popped into my head immediately. It had been thirty-six years since I’d last seen him, but I still fought with myself mentally to stop letting him rent space in my head. To stop finding tucked-away spots to be alone and cry for a man who had only really been in my life a short period of time before disappearing from it for good.

Robin strummed his long fingers on his jean-clad thighs, pulling me from my thoughts of Drest. Robin was a ball of energy that was hard to keep contained. I’d know. We’d been inseparable for eighteen years.

I touched the containment pendant around my neck and glanced over at him briefly since I was the one driving the Jeep. “You need a break from everything?”

“No,” he said. “I’ll wait until we get back to Grimm Cove and make sure Demi is doing okay first.”

“We just talked to her thirty minutes ago,” I said, still touching the pendant. “And thirty minutes before that. And…”

Robin cast me an unamused look. “I get the point. I worry. That’s all.”

“I know, and that’s part of your charm,” I returned.

He had a big heart. It was a secret he didn’t like getting out, though I wasn’t sure why. From the moment he’d quite literally popped back into my life eighteen years ago, he’d done nothing but worry and watch out for me and my daughter. He’d given up his entire life for us.

Robin no longer practiced law full-time. Instead, he’d been helping me in what I now understood had been my life’s calling.

I took on cases for people that others wouldn’t touch. Ones that human investigators didn’t believe were even real. I knew better. I knew there was far more to life than most assumed. Gone was the naïve woman who had believed the men in her family would never do anything as horrific as resurrecting the dead as monsters. What was left in that woman’s place was me—a harder, no-nonsense version of what I’d once been.

Arch had followed through, making sure Demi and I had the skills required to make it in this world. Robin, who had shocked the hell out of me by being excellent in the art of war and combat, had joined in, instructing us as well. Arch and Robin had two very different fighting styles, one more of a smash-them-with-brute-force and the other like a trained, fluid dancer who just so happened to be lethal. But both got the job done.

Not to mention, Robin had been able to work with Demi on how to use the gifts she’d inherited from her father.

He was still trying to get Demi to let him go more in-depth with lessons involving magik. My daughter had a love of the arts and hated needing to resort to violence of any kind. She preferred to get lost in a world of drawing and painting. It was where she found her happy place. I understood that drive. That need to do what makes you feel whole.

At one point, I’d assumed that something for me was investigative journalism. While I wasn’t writing stories anymore, I did benefit from the skills I’d learned in that profession. It was amazing how much my research skills from journalism came in handy working as a private investigator.

“What are you thinking about?” questioned Robin. “You got quiet.”

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